The woods surrounding the mansion were bad enough on the outside of it.  But within the walls of the manor itself, it somehow felt even darker.  A new shade of sorrow swept over the area, cloaking the land around him with every step he made.  Despite his flashlight doing its utmost best to keep the light alive around him, even he could feel it falter from the powerful influence of the mansion's aura.  The trees themselves could barely be made out from one another, shifting through the night with everchanging shadows.
A slope composed of dirt and wooden steps lead upwards towards the shrine.  A forlorn-looking red building set at the very back of the mansion grounds.  His steps were small and uncertain, not wanting to rush straight ahead and into a trap.  The note he had just read before kept him wary, as he ascended the steps towards the raised shrine.  A sign in Japanese uselessly informed him about it, incomprehensible to him.
Stupid translator, he thought to himself, wish it helped me read foreign stuff too.  Not that I even know when I'm talking some other language, it's still kinda weird when I think about it.
As he stood before the shrine doors, he looked cautiously around for any sign of presence, before trying to open the door.  It was locked firmly shut, a paper talisman firmly placed upon it.  He could feel a deep surging aura emanating from the paper, radiating, infecting his body with anxiety.
	"Shit...what do I do now?  ...wait..."
An idea came to him.  A stupid idea, but one he had to try.  The more he looked at the talisman, the more the idea inspired him as it battled with his uncertainty.  He gently raised his hand before the shrine doors, and planted it firmly upon the talisman.  What he saw next almost made him suffocate with panic.  A violent jumble of voices and faded images tore through his mind with brutal force, making him struggle to stand still.
The voices were cracked and hazy like a broken radio, sending chilling reminiscence to his time in Silent Hill.  The images were drowning in static, screaming faces and warped nightmarish eyes stared at him constantly through the talisman's power as the voices started to space out into separate words.  The images started to fix themselves, becoming four separate events.
A group of white formless beings crowded around a campfire; a man in black clothes staring cruelly down at James' vision; two colours of red and blue slowly shifting through an underground tunnel like the sun and the moon; and finally, the campfire once again from a different angle.

what should we d-	kill the mother so her children will fo-	why did he come here in the firs-	sing a little song for us dear can you do that for u-HELP MEEEEEE!

The final scream shredded through his ears, making him fall back from the deafening pain and almost fall down the steps.  He struggled to regain his balance, trying to pick out the images he had seen.  But nothing seemed to make sense.  He saw no connection between the images as he tried to unravel it all, all while the shrine remained locked.  He didn't want to turn back.  But then a presence behind him made him do so.
A small child in white clothes ran back towards the backyard.  The same voice that pleaded for help came to him.
	he fell

	please

	"Fell?  ...where?"
The ghost did not reply, and he followed with a hesitant step.  The forest continued to weigh down on him before he went back to the backyard, the spirit fading in and out of his perception.  He half-suspected it would lead him to the well he was already so anxious of.  He was right.  He noticed however that the air around the lid of the well had turned a more pungent green, thick and musty.
He had no choice.  If he was to learn more about this place and whatever connection he may find, he had to follow the whim of the ghosts.  He approached the well.  The air turned thick and heavy within its immediate area, weighing down on James.  Cold seeped into his bones as if he'd just submerged into a pool of ice water.  He placed his hands on the wooden lid, finding it heavier than he thought.
The cold started to creep at his lungs, stiffening alveoli making him shiver with each breath as he started to lift.  At first it resisted, the air weighing down upon it and pushing against him, but he kept trying.  He hoped the exertion would keep his muscles warm, groaning as he gritted his teeth.  Finally, after a shaky uplift, he managed to unwedge it from whatever force had kept it stuck, and shoved it to the side, revealing half of the well within.
Just as he expected, it was a dark narrow pit reaching down to the very depths of hell.  Not wanting to risk using his flashlight, he took a small piece of wood from nearby and lit it with his nanos before dropping it into the well.  The light cascaded down the walls with each half of a second, soon hitting the bottom around six seconds later.
	"Yyyyeah," thought James aloud, "no way I'm going down there...what did that kid want me to find though?"

He cautiously examined the area around the well, not finding anything that stuck out of the surroundings so far.  The more he looked around, the more calm he became, allowing his mind to focus more on investigation rather than superstition.  Eventually, he leaned against the well slightly, hand resting on the stone rim.  Nothing seemed to be out of place, and there was nothing he saw down the well.
Suddenly, he felt a deep raking pain across his arm, forcing him to flinch and back away from the well with a shriek.  He looked down at his arm, deep grooves having suddenly appeared as if a wild animal had assaulted him.  That was when he saw the deeper scars across the stone rim of the well.  Long carved gashes started to appear without warning upon the well, as something landed before him.  Yet he saw nothing.
Claw marks appeared on the ground before him, as James slowly began to back away.  He tried to light up his surroundings with fire, waving the flames before him to see what he was facing.  Yet he saw nothing.
Whatever was now coming towards him in large scraping steps was certainly huge in stature, judging from the weight of its invisible claws and the deep shuddering breaths that came with it.  He started to back off, but that only made the clawmarks come closer.  He stepped back further, and it came closer.  Eventually he ran, struggling not to scream his heart out as he hastily opened the door to the forest path beyond, running towards the shrine.
His pace quickened only because of his imagination at first, paranoia rising in his chest and turning it tight with fear.  He knew that beast, whatever it was, was coming up behind him fast.  Unfortunately, he appeared to be right.  Beastly breaths came closer, hulking and monstrous as he stumbled towards the shrine doors.  He had nowhere to run, the forest too thick around him to weave through, and the shrine remaining locked.  He waited for the beast to come closer, wielding his fire with a furious fear as he screamed upon its invisible maw.
Nothing came to him.  No weight, no vicious claws rending him asunder, not even the smell of singed flesh.  He opened his eyes once more.  Darkness ahead and nothing more.  He started to question his own sanity.
Did...did I just imagine that?  No...no I SAW those marks, I-...my arm...h-how did...
No wounds had been made on his arm.  Nothing had been healed, no gouging claw marks, nothing.  He knew he had felt that pain just a few minutes ago, surely.  But now he was feeling himself start to crack.  He turned around however to notice something off about the shrine doors.  They had opened slightly, the talisman finally deactivated and split in two.
The inside of the shrine was smaller than he expected it to be.  A single octagonal room, with a Shintoist shrine at the back.  Two mirrors at the northeast and northwest corners stood on both sides of the central shrine.
James stepped closer towards the Shintoist relief, seeing a small block with nine square holes in front of a model version of the shrine itself.  Several small models had been scattered on the floor nearby, resembling Shinto priests.  Not that James even recognised the religion.  A note however had been pinned to the shrine, on top of another note which was in Japanese.

The rope shrine maiden shall be severed thus
from limb to limb, until only her heart remains

	"...severed?  ...w-wait..."
Looking closer at the models, he noticed that each of them were missing a body part, either a leg, an arm, or a head each.  It seemed a simple enough puzzle as he placed them on the board in relation to a human body, head at the top, legs at the bottom corners, arms to the sides.  With a click of success, the tiny model shrine opened its doors to him.  Though he had to ask himself:
	"Huh...what's up with these old places and puzzles?  Seriously, was this something people in the old days loved to do?  ...eh, guess it's like the ancient equivalent of using a riddle to answer your password."
He gently put his hand inside, taking the small shining item within.  It was a simple bronze key, with cherries engraved on the handle.
	"Wha?  ...wait...cherry?  ...ohhhhh this is for the lock way back...shit."
As he was about to turn and consider the long long pathway back to where he began, the doors of the shrine slammed shut before him.  A deep cold air surged through his soul, making him shiver and almost collapse from the sudden drop of temperature.  He struggled to put the key into his knapsack without dropping it from his shaking fingers as he looked around himself.
The mirrors started to fog up from the unnatural cold, and he started to hear the sounds of chiming bells.  Not like church bells, but like smaller hand bells, their tingles creeping into his ear.  He tried to warm himself up with a flicker of fire in his hands, shivering violently, his breath clouding before him.
	"H-h-h-h-hhhhh...wh-who....wh-wh-who's there?!  C-c-c-come out!  S-s-stop with the f-f-f-freezing d-dammit!"
He tried to get angry, tried to make his blood boil to keep warm, tensing up his muscles as one of the mirrors started to change to a milky cloud white, swirling softly before him.  Eventually, he saw a face form from the ether.  A human face, covered in a trail of long black hair falling down both cheeks.  The head gently leaned forwards, pulling itself out of the mirror's glass.  Cold deadened hands from long torn sleeves soon followed after, a white kimono cloaked ethereally around the spectre.

The cold aura James felt from this spirit was deeper than he could have ever imagined.  He started to feel his heart panic, trying to fight back against the chilling presence, the raptor whimpering as he felt his eyes turn heavy.
	"N-n-no...s-s-s-stay away!  G-g-g-go away!  A-a-ah!  A-A-AAANGH!  H-h-hhhh!"
Imagine the sort of cold one feels in a morgue in winter.  Death in the snow, the icy hand of death robbing one's warmth of life within a single touch, the snow outside preserving the place where you died.  Where your soul now remains, tied to the frozen land forever.  This was how James felt.  He remembered one morgue he had been to, back with Sam and Max when the fear gas took his senses.  Not even their warm disposition in his memories managed to assist him, struggling to stand up as he tried to charge his fire.
	"F-F-FUCK YOU, I S-SAID STAY BACK!"
Using all of his energy, he blasted straight at the spirit with both hands full of fire, making her shriek and fall back against the mirror.  He stood up with a stronger will, encouraged by his nano "magic" working on her.
	"Y-YEAH!  WHAT NOW!?"
His fury started to burn in his heart, but soon it would falter when the spirit raised its head and emitted a terrifying shriek.  It was not the kind of shriek that violated your ears, but the kind that violated one's entire perception.  He could not hear it, but he could feel it.  See it.  The world around him changed into a grey darkened filter, like he was trapped inside an old film.  Shadows turned monstrous all around him in the grey spectral noise.

The noise was unbearable.  He could hear screams yet he could also hear nothing.  He could feel pain and sorrow yet the white noise drowned them out.  He felt hands trying to grab him in both pleaful need and cruel vindication.  The spectre before him soon changed into something far worse as the grey filter covered James' entire senses.  Five misshapen heads, with a variety of arms and hands from many corpses.
He couldn't even tell if they had been human or not, blackened eyes and widening mouths swinging their jaws with silent howls of anguish.  They may have been silent, but James could feel every inch of their agony.  He could feel something else rising up to the surface inside of him.  Something he had not felt in years.
He could feel his inner child start to scream.
The fear was getting to him, his knees buckling as he felt the fear rise within him.  He cowered, wanting to scream but his throat had locked itself up, paralysed with terror, his fury subdued as the atmosphere of fear weighed down upon him like the sins of Silent Hill.  The spirit came closer.
He could only look up at the spirit floating nearer, the cruel shadowed face glaring down upon him, eyes hidden beneath black deadened hair.  He tried to will himself, trying to remember he had faced worse things than ghosts.
It's just a ghost, he struggled to think, it's just a fucking ghost, you can beat it dammit, you can shoot that bitch with your fire!  I can't...I can't do it, but why?!  What's scaring me so much!?  It's a trick, it has to be a trick, I've faced worse than you!  I'VE FACED WORSE THAN YOU!
Finally he screamed, a childish scream born from both fear and rage as he struggled to get back on his feet and swing out at the ghost.  He knew attacking it physically did nothing, but he had to show he wasn't afraid.  He kept screaming, never stopping, not allowing the fear to penetrate him again, not even trying to think logically.  He pushed through the spirit, its icy presence penetrating his soul and weakening him horrendously as he buckled to the floor.
This was a terrible mistake.  But not for the reasons he thought.
His soul was at its lowest point, the feeling of death upon him as his eyes stared blankly upon the floor.  The spirit floated victoriously above him from behind, but it would not last for long.  Soon the raptor would turn, and his entire presence would change in the blink of an eye.
	"Thank you, my little ghost."

The demon's voice had resurged once again within James.  His eyes now pitch black, his soul restrained in purgatory as his muscles throbbed with the deadened blood of dark powers.  The spirit floated slightly back in surprise at the sudden aura of evil that radiated from the raptor.
	"Or should I say...my little GHOSTS?"
The Scissoraptor brought out his hands, slowly wielding a violently purple energy, dark enough to become an ultraviolet that only the dead could see.  The spirit soon balked with a growing fear of its own, as the demon slashed out its hands with a tremendous force of energy.  The ultraviolet arced twice through the air, slicing in a cross-shaped burning format that to a mortal's eyes would be nothing more than a violent bend in the air itself.  But it was enough to hit the spirit harder than it expected.
The ghost screamed with a dozen voices, suddenly losing its solid structure and slowly falling apart like a cheap costume.  The illusion had been shattered, the ghost falling to pieces quite literally as its parts started to change into their own forms.  White misty blobs filled the air before the Scissoraptor, who merely chuckled gravely at the sight of their true form.  They were hard to make out due to their swarming nature, zipping back and forth like wasps as they screamed and panicked in rattly little voices, before one of them said:
	"WH-WHAT'S WITH THIS GUY?!"
	"I-I DUNNO, HE GOT MAGIC SO LET'S GET OUTTA HERE!"
The dozen or so spirits split up and flew away from the shrine itself, popping off into walls with the slightest trace of ectoplasm dripping down them.  The door slowly opened once more, freed from the spectres' control.  The possessed raptor walked over to one of the mirrors, now clear once again.  He gently admired his body, flexing his claws and occasionally spasming a good flicker of dark magic.  Cruel soulless eyes gazed back before him.
	"Stupid boy...how could you possibly be afraid of a group of little imps like them?  Nothing more than the false essence of the one who died here.  Hmm...yeeees...this place contains hundreds of years of suffering.  ...maybe you'll be easier than I thought to control.  ......hmmm..."
He noticed he had managed to control James' words better, or rather his manipulated through the raptor's throat.  He was starting to get a feel for the new body truly.  And he was loving it.  An idea came to him after concerning what he thought was a rather pathetic trick.
	"Perhaps I can play a little prank of my own as well on you James.  Don't worry, I'll show you a REAL good trick..."
With a dark scraping chuckle like the claws of a monster against a child's bed, he started to place his hands upon the mirror and surge a deep force of energy through him.  The tainted power soon started to corrupt his image, making the arms and head twitch violently within his own reflection.  He surged his power harder, warping a very minute fabric of Time in order to create his little trick.
Once his mirror image had stopped moving, he smiled before it and ordered:
	"I'm going to take a little rest now.  I want you to give our James a good little scare.  It'll be so...fun...hmhmhmhmhahaha..."
He soon allowed himself to recede back into the raptor's body, having had enough fun for a while, wanting to see how it would all play out.  His reflection disappeared when he moved away.  It would never return again.

When James woke up once again, his head blurry with a strange subdermal pain all over his skull, he saw the shrine had been vacated.  No ghost, no oppressive grey filter, no lock upon the door.  He tried to cast his mind back to what happened before the fear reached his heart.  Then he remembered the key, which was thankfully still in his satchel.  He gently got up, his legs rather shaky as he tried to leave the shrine.
What the hell happened, he thought to himself.  Did I just black out?  Did the ghost just up and leave after I did?  No curse, no death by fear, nothing?!  ...what the hell does this place want with me?
He tried to ignore the questions rolling through his mind, as he made his way back through the forest towards the mansion.  Had he had the grace to check himself in the mirror before heading out, he would have had the forethought for what terror may lie ahead of him.  But he ignored everything, and for now the mansion seemed to ignore him.  The blue light of the miniature shrine he passed by the well soothed him enough to inspire his motivations.
But after passing through the cold draughts of the water room, and almost feeling a flashback to the deathly chill of the shrine before, he would soon pass close by a mirror in the small stairway hall.  Just before he was about to pass back to the cherry atrium, he caught a glance at the mirror and noted something off.  Normally he would have jumped if he had seen himself in the mirror, having had his paranoia well and truly stoked by the mansion's atmosphere.
But then he realised that would have been normal.  He looked into the mirror.

Nothing was inside it.  His reflection had disappeared.  Only one thing could cross his mind at such a disturbing sight of nothing.
	"Oh my god I'm a fucking vampire."
He quickly checked all over himself for any bites, remembering what happened to Dar-Ma as he felt for any small punctures on his body.  After several frantic minutes of patting his entire body from head to toe as best as he could, he found no bite marks that would fit the crime.
	"Hmmm...maybe...maybe it's just this mirror?  No...no I walked past here before and I was...yanno what, it's probably ghosts.  Thassit, fuckin' ghosts tryin' to trip me up like a bitch, whatever."
He tried to ignore it and made his way back to the room with the fireplace near the entrance hall.  Nothing came out to attack him in that time, which he was at first rather pleased about, but it also increased his paranoia all the more.  The very silence weighed down upon him once more, oppressive, screaming in his ear with the absence of sound as he started to shake and sweat a little.
By the time he reached the room with the fireplace, James was struggling not to run in order to keep noise to a minimum, frightened of disturbing the silence just as much as he was of the silence itself.  He swiftly made his way up the stairs and opened the locked door with the Cherry-marked key.  Swiftly opening, he stepped through.  The room was reminiscent of a living room, with padded floors and cushions to sit on around a table.
A few doors were at the sides however, one to his immediate right, with a tiny alcove to his left where laid a smaller room and another door.  He also saw a double door behind the partition straight ahead of him.  He checked the nearest door to his right, finding it to be a tiny almost cozy little room with two dressers, a kimono hung up on a rack in the centre, and a blue-lit shrine in the corner before him.

He quickly stood beside the shrine, feeling the light soothe his heart once more before he felt himself ready to explore again, but not before he heard an odd sound.  A weak little whimper coming from a small dressing table in the far corner directly diagonal of the door.  He also noted the small mirror that was there.  He gently walked towards it, the shivering tearful sounds turning louder.  He could tell it was a child's.
	"Um...hello?"
The tears did not stop, little sniffling sounds coming from the mirror, yet he saw nothing within it.  Not even his own reflection.  He would have turned away from the sounds of a tearful child after what happened before, but he couldn't.  He wasn't sure how much of that was Sarah's influence at this point.
	"A-are you okay?  Can I help you?  ...please, let me help you?"
The mirror gently moved before him, making him flinch slightly as it softly leaned forwards on its hinges.  Words started to appear in the glass, clearly being drawn by someone from within.

	MOTHER
	SAVE
	MOTHER

	"...save...w-wait, where's your mum?  Where is she?"
The crying soon faded as the words faded away with it, bleeding back into the mirror like paint down a drain.  He tried to comprehend the simple message, but found nothing else to go on.  Nothing else was in the room apart from a few Japanese dolls on top of the larger dresser to the left of the door, as well as a small door that one had to crawl through, next to the small dresser.
He decided against the crawldoor and headed back to the living room area, moving towards the small alcove where a side room lay.  Normally the room within would not have interested him before.  But after all his adventures, he realised how important the place would be in understanding more about where he was.  A study, complete with several rows of old withered books.